Electronic components are typically powered by a constant voltage direct current (DC) power source. These electronic components are specifically designed to be powered with a particular DC voltage, with some margin of error. Any spike, even temporary, in the input voltage may cause permanent component failures. In many industrial or consumer applications, high voltage power supply spikes are common. These spikes may last from a few microseconds to a larger millisecond time values. With ever increasing compactization of electronic components on semiconductor wafers, these components are more prone to failure due to a limited capacity to withstand heat generated by larger current that results from these spikes. Even if the components survive these temporary spikes, there is a possibility that the overall system may not operate reliably during a voltage spike.
Historically, overvoltage and overcurrent protection was achieved using capacitors, diodes and fuses. However, these solutions require excessive amount of space. In todays market where even small devices provide great number of functions and features, a lot of circuitry need to be fabricated in a rather small space. Therefore, these traditional overvoltage protection methods have become unsuitable for many, if not all, applications. There are also other types of circuits available for overvoltage protection. But, those circuits are typically include a rather large number of components and consume more power. Further, some of these circuits are not suitable to handle short duration spikes.